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Scotland to build giant, floating wind farm

The Scottish government announced that it approved the construction of UK’s first, and the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm.

Image via Scottish Government.

Norwegian energy firm Statoil has been granted a licence for the pilot scheme of six turbines which will have a generation capacity of 135GWh of electricity each year. Unlike land-based wind turbines, the Hywind turbines will be anchored in the seabed, transporting the electricity to the sea shore through buried cables.

“Hywind is a hugely exciting project, in terms of electricity generation and technology innovation, and it’s a real testament to our energy sector expertise and skilled workforce that Statoil chose Scotland for the world’s largest floating wind farm,” said John Swinney, deputy first minister.

This is quite exciting news, especially in the lead-up to the Paris climate summit, which attempts to establish binding agreements for countries in matters related to climate change.

“Floating wind represents a new, significant and increasingly competitive renewable energy source,“ said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions. ”Statoil’s objective with developing this pilot park is to demonstrate a commercial, utility-scale floating wind solution, to further increase the global market potential. We are proud to develop this unique project in Scotland, in a region that has optimal wind conditions, a strong supply chain within oil and gas and supportive public policies.”

The world is well on its way of achieving 25% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, not in the least thanks to innovative developments in wind energy such as this one.